Yes, but that's almost backwards from how I look at it.
The world is the world. I don't pretend to understand it, and as it happens I find it beautiful even when it's terrible, but that's, well, just fortune. So, truth is beauty, but that's happenstance. Is beauty truth? I suppose you could come up with some definitions of truth for which that would be so, but many people choose to believe in a great many pretty things that do not mesh particularly well with the world as we experience it. I don't see much point of coming up with a definition by which those things aren't beautiful (especially considering my penchant for spculative fiction) so... not for me.
It's not quite so much that right action is what makes the world most beautiful, as that, having not found some external basis for ethics, I've come to the conclusion that "good" is essentially an aesthetic judgement. It's not that things that are beautiful are necessarily good, it's that I think good things are beautiful, a kind of beauty that I find particularly valuable, and one I strive to create in the world. I see this all as a subset of aesthetics because I see it as a fundamentally creative process. Aesthetics is how we look at the world and say "that's great!" and also look at other things and say "and that's not great! and I'm going to fix it!"
And that's pretty much exactly how I look at ethics. I mean, there are all kinds of things that are part of that evaluation. Compassion. Justice. (Notice compassion comes first.) A fair bit of utilitarianism. But they are all, for me, at core, aesthetic criteria.
These are pretty much my core motivations. I guess I see my life, mostly, as an artistic impulse. Well, I'm also pretty concerned with truth. I mean, evidence suggests that Truth as such is far to big to fit into my head. But even if the best I can hope for are marginally better approximations of truth, Truth still seems awfully worth pursuing. (Again, largely on aesthetic grounds.)
So... I am very interested in both truth and beauty, but I don't equate them ;-)
no subject
The world is the world. I don't pretend to understand it, and as it happens I find it beautiful even when it's terrible, but that's, well, just fortune. So, truth is beauty, but that's happenstance. Is beauty truth? I suppose you could come up with some definitions of truth for which that would be so, but many people choose to believe in a great many pretty things that do not mesh particularly well with the world as we experience it. I don't see much point of coming up with a definition by which those things aren't beautiful (especially considering my penchant for spculative fiction) so... not for me.
It's not quite so much that right action is what makes the world most beautiful, as that, having not found some external basis for ethics, I've come to the conclusion that "good" is essentially an aesthetic judgement. It's not that things that are beautiful are necessarily good, it's that I think good things are beautiful, a kind of beauty that I find particularly valuable, and one I strive to create in the world. I see this all as a subset of aesthetics because I see it as a fundamentally creative process. Aesthetics is how we look at the world and say "that's great!" and also look at other things and say "and that's not great! and I'm going to fix it!"
And that's pretty much exactly how I look at ethics. I mean, there are all kinds of things that are part of that evaluation. Compassion. Justice. (Notice compassion comes first.) A fair bit of utilitarianism. But they are all, for me, at core, aesthetic criteria.
These are pretty much my core motivations. I guess I see my life, mostly, as an artistic impulse. Well, I'm also pretty concerned with truth. I mean, evidence suggests that Truth as such is far to big to fit into my head. But even if the best I can hope for are marginally better approximations of truth, Truth still seems awfully worth pursuing. (Again, largely on aesthetic grounds.)
So... I am very interested in both truth and beauty, but I don't equate them ;-)